Let's hope a private university boom leads to more private schools and more private hospitals

Oxford: if only it could escape the cold, dead hand of government (Photo: Getty Images)

Boris Johnson has argued convincingly in today's Telegraph in favour of the new private university being set up in London by the philosopher AC Grayling.

The new university's greatest attribute will be its freedom from the social engineering of government. With no demands for intellectual or social diversity, the New College of the Humanities will be able to choose whoever it likes, purely on the basis of excellence, just as the ideal university should be able to do.

There is a problem with the model, though – even if it's not one of Grayling's creation. And that's double payment. The new university will charge £18,000 a year. Although there will be scholarships for poorer undergraduates, most of the intake will have to be pretty well-off; or their parents will. And they'll be paying twice – through taxes into the mainstream university system, and privately to the new university.

In an ideal world, government would be cut out of the equation altogether – with all the bureaucracy and wastage that goes with government. Tax rates would then come down, as government expenditure on universities disappeared, to be replaced by private fees and scholarships paid for out of those fees. In an ideal world, the same system would apply to schools and hospitals.

This is, at the moment, pie in the sky stuff. The Coalition is too cautious to risk the bad headlines that go with any sort of privatisation; and any tax cuts are untenable today, in our near-bankrupt country.

Still, though, the Conservatives' natural tendency is towards freedom, and devolution of power from the Government to the people. The Free Schools initiative is a small move in that direction – even if government still controls the purse-strings, at least wasteful local education authorities are, in part, being marginalised.

It's striking, too, that Grayling's new university has been broadly welcomed – with little of the customary, regressive, kneejerk reaction against anything that removes power from the supposedly benign – though usually incompetent – grip of government.

Here's hoping that Grayling's university will be a historic step towards freedom from inept government control of the most important institutions in this country.